Bridalveil Creek. The Adventure Begins

I must start by saying that when I think of Bridalveil Creek what comes to mind is my favorite waterfall I have seen so far in the columbia river gorge. That being said this adventure starts with no knowledge of what was to come which I think makes it even that much more fun. October 25th 2008 came and my dad and I headed off to the columbia river gorge with the sole purpose of finding this upper waterfall in Bridalveil creek. Between the two of us we had 80 years of hiking and exploring at our disposal but until this day it had never been put to use to find hidden waterfalls in the steep and rugged george. The only knowledge we had was that some were between the old columbia river highway and the little bridge on palmera road there we more waterfalls on Bridalveil creek. Our true adventure started when we parked the car about 1.5 miles up palmera road and headed straight down into the drainage.

Upper Bridalveil Creek

The decent is a drop of 125' in about 200' of distance so it is quite steep and full of salmon beary and devils club. Once on the bottom we were greated with a very beautiful creek but the brush choked the creek right to the edge of the water. Fall was in full swing so this made for some great shots of the leaves in the creek.

Upper Bridalveil Creek

Looking down the creek there did not appear to be any falls very soon and looking up all we could see was some small drops of rock and water.

Upper Bridalveil Creek Down Creek

Upper Bridalveil Creek Up Creek

Deciding up creek was better we started pushing our way in that direction. A few minutes later we saw a nice small drop but thought this could not be the falls we were looking for.

Upper Bridalveil Creek

Upper Bridalveil Creek

Next I crossed the creek and found my way up for a close up shot of the falls.

Upper Bridalveil Creek Small drop.

Up the creek was not working so we headed down next. This took a while and all we did not find the falls we were looking for so we headed backup the steep bank to the car. When I got home on this day I did a little more research and found out that we had started just a little to high on the creek and so planed a return as soon as the weather would allow. The creek was beautiful and we did have a great adventure. The consolation prize was this falls below which we were granted access to. This is not the end of this story by a long shot so stay tuned for more.

Falls below angels rest.